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“Marinette!”
Said girl stirred a little, mumbling, “5 more minutes, maman.”
“Marinette!”
Yet she did not respond, rolling over to cover her ears with the pillow next to her.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, if you do not wake up right now you are going to miss your flight to New York!”
Sabine Cheng stifled a laugh at her daughter’s high-pitched shriek.
**
Marinette grumbled as she picked herself up from the ground.
Amazing start to the day, rolling off your bed and falling down.
“Cheer up, Marinette!” Tikki said, unfailingly happy in the morning (as always). “You’re going to go on your America tour today!”
Her chosen brushed her teeth faster, while simultaneously trying to make sure she had everything ready. “Tikki, am I missing anything?” she asked frantically.
While looking at the list Marinette made, Tikki smiled fondly at her chosen, hoping that the Rossi girl and Marinette’s ex-friends didn’t ruin the trip Marinette had worked so hard to organize.
Since Bustier couldn’t be bothered to, it fell onto Marinette to plan the senior trip. It was supposed to be educational and fun, in a way, since they would be required to write an essay about their trip. It counted for more than 50% of their grade.
With help from her friends (Alix, Kim, Max and Chloe), in no time, Marinette had developed an outline of what places they could visit.
The original plan (before it was presented to the class) was to go to New York, Metropolis, LA and then finally California.
But nooo, Lila Rossi just had to see her so-called soulmate, Damian Wayne (“Marinette, how could you?” “How could I what?” “How could you just exclude Gotham because I want to see my soulmate?”), billionaire Bruce Wayne’s son.
Despite Marinette’s warnings, Mdm. Bustier forced her to change the itenary so that Lila could see her ‘soulmate’ (“Marinette, please change the locations.” “But Mdm. Bustier, Gotham is one of the most crime-ridden-” “I will not stand for your petty grievances, Marinette. Change it at once.”) and so the list had become:
California, New York, Metropolis and then Gotham.
Nevertheless, Marinette beamed as she waved to her parents, feeling excited.
“You can stop waving now,” Chloe remarked dryly, filing her nails. “They’re out of sight.”
**
You might be wondering, what happened to elicit such a change between their relationship.
Lila.
That was one thing Marinette had to thank her for. She showed Marinette who her real friends were, a.k.a Chloe, Alix, Kim and Max.
Chloe didn’t believe Lila from the start (“Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Does she expect me to believe that Jagged Stone, the one who lives in my hotel every monthowns a cat? Everyone knows he’s allergic to them!”) but Max was disillusioned when some of the things Lila said didn’t line up – “I got tinnitus from saving Jagged Stone’s cat from an airplane!” “You would’ve become deaf. Not suffer from tinnitus.” “Don’t be silly, Max!” – case in point.
Kim and Alix, on the other hand, came to know when Lila mixed her names up (“I know Michael Phelps – he’s such an amazing skater, Alix. I could give you some tips from him!” “Michael Phelps? Isn’t he a swimmer?”) and (Marinette snorted when she heard that) said Michael Phelps was a skater.
That certainly didn’t earn her any points with those two.
In the end, Marinette could say she would take her life right now than the one before because until Lila came, she never really noticed how whiny the class was.
She shuddered when she remembered the never-ending requests they had – and they expected her to do it for free.
Thank god she got away from them.
**
In response to Chloe’s statement from earlier, Marinette mock-glared at her. “I know, Chloe. I was about to stop.”
“Sure, Mari,” sniffed her best friend.
Marinette protested feebly. “Really!”
“Uh-huh,” Chloe continued to file her nails, completely uninterested.
Before Marinette could retort, the door burst open and two balls of chaos rolled into the car with one poor Max.
“Ha! I won, Kim, you owe me 30 Euros!” Alix crowed triumphantly.
Kim, as expected, disagreed. “No way, pipsqueak! I won.”
“I did.”
“No, I did.”
“I did.”
“Can you both please sit properly?” Chloe pushed them with a surprising amount of strength. “You’re wrinkling the car leather.”
In response, the two of them stuck their tongues out.
Marinette snickered at the expression on Chloe’s face – exasperation, pure exasperation.
Max finally up righting himself, stood up unsteadily as he walked to the only empty seat next to Marinette.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Kim said, pulling Max onto his lap.
Max squeaked, his cheeks turning a fiery shade of red.
Alix cackled, “Poor Max. Kim, you really shouldn’t do that. You’re going to give the poor boy a heart attack.”
Marinette sighed happily for her friends. She was honestly elated that Kim and Max had found their soulmate in each other. They were just adorable!
She fairly beamed when Marinette saw the love-sick smile on Chloe’s face. It meant she was talking to Kagami.
Alix hadn’t found hers yet and according to the girl herself, she wasn’t really bothered by it either because she was ace.
Marinette just wished she could find her soulmate.
Soulmate bonds – in their world – came in different types. For example, Chloe and Kagami’s bond was the word bond. Each had a word or a phrase written circling their wrists (“Excuse me, you dropped your phone.” “Thank you”) and whoever said those words was their soulmate.
Kim and Max had the string-bond – one of the strongest bonds in existence. The bond only surfaced when it decided whether the two people were ready to become lovers.
Marinette had the aura bond – one of the most difficult bonds to find your soulmate with. Basically, her aura and her soulmate’s aura – when they meet – would touch each other and glow.
It was extremely rare to witness such a bonding and even rarer for someone to find their soulmate with it.
She often wondered whether she would ever find her soulmate. At first, she thought her soulmate was Chat Noir, after all, wasn’t he her other half?
But their auras did not connect when they met.
“Marinette?” She snapped out of her thoughts when Chloe shook her arm. “Come on! We’re at the airport!”
**
After checking in – and successfully avoiding Lila’s attempts at sabotage (“Oh my gosh, Marinette! Your ticket is ripped to shreds, you can’t come!” “Well, it’s a good thing I made two copies then, isn’t it? Just in case I lost mine.”) – Marinette sighed and resigned herself to listening to Lila’s bullshit for the next few hours.
Unfortunately, she and Alix had gotten the seats right behind her and Alya.
“-and then Prince Ali took me out on a date!” Lila was babbling.
Alya gasped theatrically, right on cue. “Oh my gosh, girl! How did it go?”
“Well-”
Marinette groaned and resisted the urge to throw herself out of the window. “Kill me now,” she said tiredly, “Please.”
Alix didn’t look like she was faring any better and glared at the idiots in front of them. “Why did we have to get stuck with them?”
“I don’t know,” Marinette banged her head on the table in front of her. “But what I do know is that the next few hours are going to be torture.”
**
By the time the plane landed, Alix was eyeing the knife in her hand murderously, clearly plotting Lila and Alya’s murder, and Marinette had scribbled uselessly on 2 clean pages of paper because Lila’s voice was interrupting her inspiration.
“FINALLY!” Alix screamed, running around like a maniac. “FINALLY, WE GET TO LEAVE THOSE-” Yelling some extreme profanities, she continued, “BEHIND!”
Even though the attendants were eyeing the two of them like they were crazy, Marinette didn’t care because finally.
How did anyone believe Lila anyway?
**
The next day, Marinette argued with Chloe the better color for her new sketchbook at one of the gift shops near the Statue of Liberty. “Red it better because it’s so bright but not too bright. That way, if I don’t know where it is, I can just look. For. RED!”
Snatching the yellow one off the shelves, Chloe held it in front of Marinette’s eyes. “NO! Yellow! Red would just merge into your room because it’s pink, while yellow would be more obvious!”
“But yellow is too bright for the night!”
Offended, Chloe gasped. “How dare you-”
Seeing as they were dragging the attention of other customers, Alix snatched both the books from their hands and put it on the counter. “Both of them, please.”
As they walked out of the stationary shop (Chloe and Marinette still arguing) the three of them spotted Lila, Alya, Mylene and Rose walking out of a boutique loaded with bags.
“I can’t believe they’re going shopping when we’re supposed to be taking notes for the essay.” Alix muttered glaring at them with disgust.
Chloe smirked icily. “It doesn’t matter because when they fail the essay, it’ll be their fault.”
Marinette and Chloe agreed to disagree in favor of scorning Lila and her cronies.
**
California was the fun part of the trip. With its beaches and just right weather, Marinette and crew set up their site somewhere on the beach.
They spent most of their days running around, playing games and in Marinette’s case being completely oblivious to the boys flirting with her.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help wonder why Hawkmoth wasn’t striking. It had been 3 days now and yet there was no akuma. Perhaps he was giving her a break since Chat Noir didn’t show up to half the fights anyway.
It certainly wasn’t because Gabriel Agreste was frantically planning for his spring line of which the developments got delayed due to his…terrorizing activities.
Marinette made the most of the reprieve.
**
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Chloe screeched. “I cannot believe you!”
They were in Metropolis now and Marinette was currently stuck inside a sideways bus.
How, you ask?
She saved a young girl from being the hostage of the villain. Unfortunately, because she wasn’t Ladybug then her reflexes weren’t as fast and now Marinette was stuck inside the bus being the villain’s hostage.
Just a regular day for her.
Along with Chloe, Alix was yelling, “Mari, what is wrong with you?”
“Marinette, is her name?” asked the terribly-dressed villain (seriously, was he color blind or something?), “Alrighty then! Superman!” he bellowed suddenly.
Superman appeared almost immediately and distracted the villain.
While, Superboy pulled Marinette out and set her beside her friends where she was promptly pulled into a bone-crushing hug.
“Guys,” she gasped, exaggerating only slightly (read: a lot), “Can’t….breathe…need…to…breathe!”
Finally, they let her go and just before Superboy was about to take off, Marinette called out, “Thank you!”
In reponse, he merely tipped an imaginary hat.
**
Marinette muttered angrily while Kim and Alix rough-housed with each other blow some steam.
How could they? She fumed. How f*cking could they?
Their ‘class’ had left them behind in Gotham Park. And Mdm. Bustier (some teacher) hadn’t even bothered to do attendance to check if everyone was there.
Marinette would even go as far as to bet that Lila was the one to engineer this.
“Look OUT!”
Yelping, Marinette tumbled down laughing when a Great Dane came jumping on her, licking her face.
Giggling, she ran her hands through his fur making no move to get up.
“Marinette!” Chloe gasped, running to her, “Are you okay?”
Still playing with the unnamed dog, Marinette giggled out a “Yes,”.
“Ms, I am so sorry,” a masculine voice gasped, evidently from running. “Titus, no. Bad-”
Marinette sat up slowly. “It’s fine, your dog – Titus, is it? – is really very cute.”
“Cute?” Surprise laced his tone. “Most people describe Titus as scary. I haven’t seen him take to someone so fast.”
Standing up with Chloe’s help, Marinette brushed her outfit and made eye contact with the man.
Her breath suddenly whooshed out of her chest.
And slowly, slowly but steadily, her pinkish red aura reached out and merged with his dark emerald one.
As Marinette watched in wonder, the two of them slowly formed a beautiful, breath-taking gold turning brighter and brighter and then it was gone.
The only sign it had been there was a little heart made out of a puff smoke – one side red, the other green.
“Oh my god, Mari,” Chloe breathed. “I think that’s your soulmate!”
You think?
When Damian went to walk Titus that afternoon, he expected it to go normally.
He certainly didn’t expect Titus to run off and then meet his soulmate all in one go.
Nevertheless, he swallowed thickly and introduced himself, “My name is Damian Wayne.”
His soulmate’s friends looked at him in shock but his soulmate didn’t have any such reaction. If she was surprised, she was doing a damn good job of hiding it. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”
“Marinette,” her glasses friend said, “Don’t you know who that is?”
She turned to him curiously. “He’s my soulmate, Max.”
The girl – familiar from somewhere, he thinks – slaps her forehead and pulls Marinette to her side while whispering something in her ear.
“Oh!” Marinette’s cheeks suddenly colored and she said, “I didn’t know you were the Damian Wayne, I just-”
Suddenly feeling nervous, Damian interrupted her. “It’s fine,” he said slightly harshly. “It was actually kind of refreshing to meet someone who didn’t know who I was.”
She started blushing all over again and he distantly thinks, it’s cute.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Damian moved forward to try and dispel the awkward silence that had descended upon them. “I’ve never seen you here.”
“Well,” Marinette stutters, “We were actually on a school trip, but our teacher acci-”
“Since Mari’s too nice to tell you it objectively,” Her blonde friend interrupts, “I will. We were left behind by our teacher. Chloe Bourgeois.”
Chloe holds out her hand, eyes threatening and Damian takes it, equally cold.
Somehow sensing the tension between them, Marinette continues, “And we were supposed to go to WE but because they left us behind-”
“-we’re stuck here,” finished a pink-haired girl. “Alix Kubdel.”
Nodding towards her (she certainly seemed better than Chloe), Damian sends a small smile to his soulmate (his heart beat faster at the thought that he found his soulmate). “I can take you to WE if you want. But how did your teacher just forget you existed?”
Exchanging looks with her tall friend, Marinette gestures towards him and says, “Kim will tell you.”
**
By the time they have reached WE, Damian is fuming resisting the urge to go and murder this Lila Rossi and Adrien Agreste and the rest of their idiot classmates.
Who tells someone letting a pathological liar, lie and lie is taking the ‘high road’?
What kind of friends ditch someone who did so much for them just like that?
And the liar. Damian seethed at the thought of her. How dare she, how dare she target his soulmate.
“Woah, Damian, man,” said Kim – the tall one, “You might want to calm down. You’re scaring the people.”
Breathe Damian. Breathe.
Inhaling with great difficulty, Damian said, “I am going to murder your class and teacher. And I won’t even make it look like an accident.”
Chloe finally looked at him with something other than wariness as she murderously said, “I’ll help you.”
Marinette panicked looking at their serious expressions. “No! You guys can’t do that!”
“Watch me,” Damian snarled.
Richard Grayson considered himself to be a good person.
So, who thought he deserved this?
This being a class (and teacher) without braincells because they believe every damn word out of a pathetic liar’s mouth. Seriously, hadn’t they heard of something called Google?
Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, the teacher had forgotten about 5 students and stated, “They are troublemakers anyway, we can start without them,”
Was she insane?
She was a goddamn teacher! Didn’t she know it was her job to make sure they straightened out?
Gritting his teeth, he said with a patience did not feel, “Mdm. Bustier, we cannot start the tour without your missing students. You will have to find them and get them here.”
So, here he was.
Waiting for the idiot of the teacher to try and get her students to WE.
Needless to say, he was elated when the WE doors slammed open and Damian came striding in (even though he looked like he was about to murder someone).
“Lil’ D!” Dick yelled, hoping Damian saw the pleading in his eyes, “Come meet the class we’re touring today!”
Growling, Damian walked right passed him and glared icily at the class. “Which one of you is the liar?” he hissed, glaring at everyone.
When no one responded, Dick volunteered himself, “That one.”
Damian shot him a slightly thankful look and advanced to her. “You,” he spat. “Lie about my soulmate one more time and I’ll end you.”
Turning her nose up at him, she sniffled theatrically. “How dare you say that to me? My soulmate is Damian Wayne and he’ll have the Wayne lawyers on you in seconds.”
By now, everyone (employees included) had frozen, watching the drama eagerly. But when Lie-la said that.
Most people burst out laughing immediately, and Dick would have too, had she not said Damian was her soulmate. “What do you mean, Mdm. Rossi, that Damian is your soulmate?”
Smirking triumphantly, her olive-green eyes sparkled maliciously as she said, “Damian Wayne is my soulmate.”
Woah. She really hadn’t done her research. “Mdm. Rossi,” Dick said coldly. “Damian is not your soulmate.”
“And how would you know that?” An ombre-haired, glasses-wearing girl glared at him.
“Because,” he said coolly, “I am his brother and you do realize that Damian was the one to tell you to stay away from his soulmate?”
Lila paled and Dick felt satisfaction course through him.
But then he registered what Damian said. He had found his soulmate.
“Wait, Damian,” Dick asked turning to him, “Just who is your soulmate?”
“I am,” a female voice said. A short blue-haired girl with pale skin walked next to Damian and held out her hand. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng,”
Dick smiled at the girl and shook it firmly. “Dick Grayson.”
“But that’s not possible,” cried out the glasses-wearing girl, Alya. “Lila is Damian’s soulmate!”
Damian glared at her fiercely and she shrunk back. “I can assure you, Lila Rossi is most definitely not my soulmate. Perhaps you should check everything she has said on Google. It does exist you know.”
Alya quickly pulled out her phone and was probably searching up everything Lila told her.
The rest of her class watched her in tense silence and then backed away slowly as they saw the unbridled fury grow in her eyes. “You.” Alya hissed. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!”
Marinette jumped when she felt a hand touch her elbow.
It was Adrien. “Marinette,” he hissed, “What are you doing? Why are you exposing Lila?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Adrien,” she said loudly, drawing the attention of Damian. “Maybe it’s because she’s been lying about me?”
“But she wasn’t-”
“Hurting anyone?” Marinette glared at him coldly. “She was, Adrien. Me.And you and your ‘high road’ bullshit can go and rot in hell for all I care.”
“Wait,” asked Nino, hurt evident in his expression. “Adrien knew all this time?”
Chloe smiled icily. “Yes. He didn’t want to expose Lie-la because she wasn’t ‘hurting anyone’,”
And then suddenly, the entire class was rounding on Adrien, who was frantically trying to explain his actions.
In the chaos, no one noticed Lila advance closer and closer to Marinette.
She jumped onto her and screeched, “MARINETTE DUPAIN-CHENG, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”
Lila attempted to try and choke Marinette but said girl was quicker, stronger and smarter.
Marinette quickly backed away and flipped her onto her back, pinning Lila’s wrists together.
“Let me go!” Lila was thrashing around trying to get out of Marinette’s hold.
“Mdm. Rossi, you are under arrest for assault and attempted murder,” came the cool voice of an unfamiliar officer.
As one of his men handcuffed Lila, Damian wrapped Marinette into a warm hug. He opened his mouth to say something but Alya interrupted him.
“Marinette!” she called. “I’m so sorry! Can you give me an interview with the Damian Wayne?”
Marinette goggled at her, unable to process what she said. Turning to Chloe, she asked, “Did she actually just say that?”
“Well?” Alya tapped her foot impatiently and Marinette glared at her.
“No, Alya, I will not give you an interview with Damian,” she hissed.
Alya looked gobsmacked. “But…why? I’m your best friend!”
“Best friend?” Marinette laughed. “Best friends don’t leave each other when the next shiny thing comes around. Best friends don’t ditch other. Best friends don’t believe a liar over each other. And besides,” she added sweetly. “You are not my best friend. Chloe is.”
Chloe beamed at her.
“Alright,” Dick clapped. “I know this must be a nasty shock-”
Damian snorted quietly when he said that.
“-but we must continue with the tour!”
Marinette shot him an amused look.
At least everything was right in her world.